The best part of carpooling isn’t the split fare or the reduced traffic - it is the high stakes storytelling. On one such instance, a man found himself in a carpool with three frequent companions, all women. The one offering the carpool happened to be the VP of a major European bank, who took to talk to ‘common folk’ on such carpools.
Usually, the talk is about interest rates, office gossips, traffic rants or the tech ecosystem, but then she shared the saga of her Ethnic Day commute.
Imagine this: It’s a major corporate celebration. She is dressed in a grand silk saree. The kind that requires a tactical plan just to sit down in. She looks every bit the high-powered executive. She steps into her electric vehicle, a silent masterpiece of the future.
She notices the battery is at 10%. Now, for a VP, 10% is usually a manageable margin of error. In her head she could make it to office. In traffic, however, 10% is a tight rope walk.
Midway to the office, the future died.
The sleek, silent miracle became a very expensive paperweight in the middle of a lane crawl. Within minutes the VP had to summon the most non-future vehicle imaginable: The Tow Truck. Enduring the extremely vocal ‘greetings’ of other drivers, she panicked! Panic unlike in the boardrooms she is often in! The tow truck arrived smelling of burnt oil, excessive diesel and unfiltered honesty, driven by a man who had clearly never seen the inside of a European bank.
The VP had a choice: Stand on the dusty shoulder of the road in five yards of premium silk or climb into the cabin.
She climbed.
And so, the journey began. Twenty-five miles back home in the opposite direction. There she was, perched high in the vibrating, rattling cabin of a grease-stained truck, her grand saree shimmering against the backdrop of torn seat covers and dangling air fresheners. She sat next to the trucker, nodding along to the heavy rumble of a diesel engine, looking like a displaced queen being repatriated after a failed coup.
The rest of the commuters in the carpool were losing it. The visual of a sophisticated banker in a gala-ready saree, hitching a ride on a tow truck because she forgot to plug in her car, is the ultimate equalizer.
It turns out that at 0% charge, your status doesn’t come from your bank account; it comes from whoever has the strongest winch. This gave the man enough reason to wear a gentle smile on an otherwise serious face!
The Oversoul Inc. (theoversoulinc.com and theoversoulinc.press) is an independent literary press and narrative studio based in India. We are not affiliated, associated, or in any way officially connected with any other company or website operating under the Oversoul name.